Hi all,
Sharing an issue we hit on a data center EPMS project, in case it helps
others using the IEC 61850 driver on Linux.
Environment
- Ignition 8.1.49 on Linux [distro/version]
- EPMS gateway connected to [N] IEDs via the IEC 61850 driver
- DCIM and BMS gateways connect to the EPMS gateway over OPC UA
What happened
During electrical safety testing, the IEC 61850 communication equipment
was switched OFF and back ON. At that moment the EPMS gateway JVM
terminated, and the service wrapper relaunched it about 6 seconds later.
While it was down, the OPC UA connections from the DCIM and BMS gateways
went into error. This happened on two consecutive test days.
wrapper.log excerpt
[paste log here]
What we found so far
Our analysis points to file descriptor (FD) range handling in the native
(TMW) communication code the IEC 61850 driver uses on Linux.
Workaround under evaluation
Replacing IEC 61850 with Modbus TCP for these devices. In our setup,
millisecond timestamps are not coming through from the devices anyway.
Questions
- Has anyone else seen the gateway go down on IEC 61850 device reconnects on Linux?
- Is this addressed in a later 8.1.x or 8.3 release?
- Any recommended mitigation (e.g., open-files ulimit) until a fix is available?